


Thanks for the Memories

by RowenaZahnrei



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Anger, Artificial Intelligence, Authority Challenge, Brain Scan, Choices, Comrades, Drunkenness, Emotional Hurt, Fear, Gen, Hope vs. Despair, Identity, Journals, Loneliness, Loss of hope, Memory Alteration, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Old Movies, Personality Alteration, Practical Jokes, Reconciliation, Responsibility, Roommates, Self-Harm, Sharing a Room, Understanding, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, care, deathday, deep space travel, fractured personality, hologram, last human, mining ship, radiation, superglue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-07 21:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6824980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowenaZahnrei/pseuds/RowenaZahnrei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few short scenes plus a full story directly inspired by Red Dwarf: Thanks for the Memory and the 'lost' episode The Bodysnatcher.</p><p>Scenes: FOUR MISSING DAYS - What did happen during those four missing days, after Lister 'gifted' Rimmer with eight months of his own memory as a deathday present? </p><p>Full story: DEAD - With Lister on the brink of suicide, will Rimmer be able to keep the promise he made to Holly, or will he fail yet again? </p><p>COMPLETE!  Reviews welcome! :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Four Missing Days: Day One

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Red Dwarf. Please don't sue me or steal my stories! Thanks!

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES  
A scattered collection of scenes and stories that never were, inspired by and in tribute to the British TV series Red Dwarf.  
By Rowena Zahnrei

 

#1: Four Missing Days  
Inspired by "Thanks for the Memory," Series 2, Episode 3

The Story So Far…

After a drunken night of celebrating Rimmer's first deathday, Rimmer confesses his desperate loneliness to Lister in a fit of inebriated sincerity. Similarly drunk, but more practiced at it, Lister hits on the idea of uploading his memory into the computer and pasting eight months of it into Rimmer's mind, thereby making Rimmer think the romance Lister had shared with his ex-girlfriend, Lise Yates, back in Liverpool was really his. Rimmer wakes up the next day believing he'd once had a caring, passionate relationship with a beautiful woman who'd honestly loved him, flaws and all—a belief that adds a drop of fabric softener to his normally over-starched and prickly personality.

While Rimmer reminisces about his days with Lise, he begins to realize he (really Lister) had treated her rather badly, ultimately ending the relationship with some "wishy-washy twaddle about not wanting to get tied down." Rimmer has trouble understanding this. He had always dreamed of a steady girlfriend who would encourage his career, but Lister had wanted to "play the field." Hearing Rimmer tell it makes Lister realize what a fool he'd been to ever let her go. Rimmer, misunderstanding his reaction, thinks Lister's making a dig and starts to get annoyed, which is where this scene begins…

Day One

Rimmer sank down onto the bottom bunk, his expression wistful. 

"She was a lover, and a friend."

"And beautiful," Lister added from the bunk above.

"Gorgeous." Rimmer said.

"Great sense of humor."

"Terrific."

"The sex was fantastic."

"Amazing sex."

"Brilliant sex."

"Oh, primo dynamite sex!"

Lister was getting carried away now, forgetting this was supposed to be Rimmer's memory. 

"Fantastic sex! Stupendous sex!"

Rimmer frowned up at him suspiciously. 

"Lister?"

But Lister was too engrossed in his reminiscences to hear the change in his bunkmate's tone. 

"The way she used to— Oh..."

"Lister!"

"Oh, the sex. Brilliant sex!"

"Lister, Lister!" Rimmer shouted, finally breaking through. "How do you know?"

"I'm just having a guess."

"Kindly don't," Rimmer said archly, rising to his feet and striding to the table, where loose bits of Lister's jigsaw puzzle were scattered all over the metal surface. "No one will ever know how beautiful the relationship between me and Lise Yates was."

Lister rolled his eyes.

"Yeah. Right, man..."

"Right!" Rimmer retorted. "So, I'll thank you to leave it alone, if you please."

"Fine!"

Rimmer straightened his wrinkled shirt, satisfied his authority had been successfully reasserted. 

"In any case, enjoyable as a trip down memory lane may be, the morning is a-wasting, laddie! I feel like doing something. How about heading down to the cinema with me to catch a film?"

Lister had been starting to get up, but at that he fell back against his crumpled pillows once more. 

"No thanks, Rimmer. I know the sort of films you like. If I wanted to spend six hours watchin' Napoleon's army march through Russia, I'd hike the two thousand floors down to the refrigeration unit and stare at the frozen stores."

Rimmer seemed lost. 

"What are you driveling about, Lister?"

"That endless documentary thing you always watch," Lister said. "And, what's that other one: 'Patton: A Genius In His Own Mind'? I'm tellin' you, Rimmer, never again."

To Lister's surprise, instead of getting all uptight and priggish, Rimmer actually chuffed a small laugh. 

"No, no, you've got it all wrong," he said. "I meant a proper film. You know, like that one with the actress you like from the twentieth century, Marilyn Monroe. Or, better yet, something with that cute brunette, what's her name, Audie Murphy."

Lister's eyes widened and he snorted helplessly into his hand. Rimmer's ignorance of classic cinema was nearly as complete as his ignorance of astronavigation theory. Audie Murphy was a male actor, a decorated veteran of World War II, who had starred in numerous war pictures. 

"I think you mean Audrey Hepburn," Lister corrected, once he could trust himself to speak.

Rimmer snapped his fingers, oblivious to his mistake. 

"That's the one. Come on, will you? It's not much fun going to the cinema by yourself."

Lister hopped down from the bunk and looked Rimmer over as if he were inspecting a container of leftovers from the back of the fridge that may or may not have gone off. This was something strange, Rimmer actually wanting to spend time with him in a social setting. Yet, he seemed sincere, even anxious Lister might turn him down. Deciding to test him, Lister asked, "What about your clothes, man? Are you seriously goin' out lookin' like that?"

"Like what?" 

Rimmer glanced down at the crumpled, half-buttoned uniform shirt he was still wearing from the day before. 

"Oh, right. Well, it's not like there's anyone out there to impress, is there? I reckon this'll do until Holly wakes up."

Lister's eyebrows raised. 

"You mean, you're gonna let Holly sleep and go out there in a wrinkled uniform with your hair lookin' like Tom Baker after a wind storm?"

Rimmer squinted at him. 

"What is this? Since when do you care about my appearance—or your own, for that matter? I can ask Holly for a fresh uniform when I see him." As he spoke, he moved toward the mirror on the wall over the sink, where he caught a glimpse of just how frizzy, uncombed, and unkempt he looked. "Unless…" He ran a hand over his rough chin. "Hm, yes… Maybe I should—"

Lister was quick to interrupt. 

"No, no, it's fine, man. Let's just go and leave Holly to have his rest."

Rimmer still seemed puzzled, but he shrugged and soon brightened. 

"Well then, matey boy, what are we standing around here for? Let's not keep Audrey waiting."

*******

The cinema was a shabby, average affair with rows of seats arranged on a slight slope. The picture was cast onto the wide front screen in the classic fashion, from a small, Skutter-operated projection room at the back.

As it turned out, Rimmer was as unfamiliar with Audrey Hepburn's filmography as a Justin Bieber fan, so it was left to Lister to make the choice. Being a life-long admirer of Humphrey Bogart - particularly his performance as the American ex-patriot café owner Rick Blaine in "Casablanca" - he told the Skutters to run "Sabrina," then went to join Rimmer in the center row.

Despite his strange behavior earlier, Lister had felt certain the story of a young girl's infatuation with her father's young, playboy employer would provoke a flood of snarky comments from the hopelessly unromantic Rimmer. And there were a few sarcastic groans at the beginning. Yet, as the movie went on, he seemed to grow more and more interested, until now he sat engrossed, staring at the tennis court scene playing out on the screen as if he was living it right along with the characters.

Curious to know just how far this strange new attitude of his went, Lister decided to try for the ultimate test. Plucking a cigarette from the brim of his hat, he made a show of lighting it, then took a long drag, deliberately blowing a thick plume of smoke toward the screen. He sat back then, waiting for Rimmer's reaction.

After a moment, Rimmer leaned back in his seat and sighed. 

"She really was lovely, wasn't she," he said. "Graceful, like those showgirls in that bar on Mimas who dance in half-gravity. That David Larrabee git doesn't deserve her."

Lister stared, not understanding. 

"Rimmer, aren't you gonna say something?"

"Hm?"

"About me cigarette?" He held it up, waggling the smoking end next to Rimmer's face. 

Rimmer tore his eyes from the screen just long enough to shoot the offending object a cursory glance.

"What about it?"

"Well, I'm smoking it, aren't I? Right here, in the Non-Smoking Section."

"So?" Rimmer snapped. "Is the theater packed with people? Has the smoke alarm gone off? No? Then shut-up, I'm trying to watch this."

Lister sat back, stunned. 

"Right."

He settled in to enjoy his cigarette, and the movie, but he found he couldn't relax. Rimmer wasn't behaving the way he always did. While normally that would be a cause for celebration, Lister couldn't help feeling a twinge of guilt. He'd meddled with the man's mind, altered his memories. Could it be he'd inadvertently altered his character as well?

Up next: Day Two. Stay Tuned!


	2. Day Two

Lister paced back and forth across the Drive Room while the Cat sat at navigation, eating from a plastic food tray and wearing a flashy pink suit. Several empty food trays lay scattered across the console, and a stack of three more meals stood waiting for Cat to get around to eating them.

"I'm tellin' you, he's different, man," Lister said, still conflicted over what he'd done to Rimmer. "Pastin' in those memories must have, like, changed his personality somehow."

Cat was intent on his food, and made no attempt to hide his annoyance that Lister's ranting had interrupted his meal. 

"So? I thought that's what you wanted."

"I did. I do. It's just—" He floundered for the words, gesturing helplessly. 

Cat made a face.

"Then, why are you complainin'? You're happy, he's happy. Now leave me alone and let me eat my lunch!"

Rimmer bounded into the Drive Room, dressed in a fresh uniform and cheerfully humming "La Vie En Rose," from "Sabrina."

"Afternoon, all," he greeted. "I must say, Listy, that was a terrific film we saw yesterday. I can't get it out of my mind. Who'd have thought that, somewhere under that crusty exterior, that uptight, officious smeghead Linus would have had a heart, eh?"

Lister eyed him carefully. 

"Yeah, who'd have thought."

"Such a marvelous ending. Are there any other films like that?"

"What? Why?"

"I was just thinking," Rimmer said. "If there are, maybe we could make this film watching a regular thing."

"But I thought you hated all that mushy romantic crap!" Lister said.

"Well, yes, when the stories are unrealistic. Like that putrid 'Gone With the Wind' tripe you forced me to endure two months ago." He made a face. "But this film really spoke to me, Lister. I don't know, maybe I'm still charged up from that surprise party. Perhaps it's been reliving my time with Lise. But, I haven't felt this good in years."

He smiled a warm, genuine smile that left both Lister and the Cat thoroughly disconcerted. Unaware, he checked his watch and said, "Oop! I'd better pop off to see how the Skutters are getting on decontaminating the upper decks. See you gentlemen later." 

He gave a jaunty, normal salute and walked away with the easy stride of a man comfortable in his own skin, humming "Yes! We Have No Bananas" as he went.

Cat stared after him, his food tray forgotten. 

"Whoa, I see what you mean, buddy. Who was that man and what has he done with Alphabet Head?"

"It is Rimmer," Lister said. "But...friendly."

Cat shuddered. 

"It's not natural."

"I don't know." Lister seemed thoughtful. "It's sorta like that film, that Linus Larrabee character he was talkin' about. See, Linus was played by Humphrey Bogart - remember him from 'Casablanca'?"

Cat gave a disinterested grunt. 

Taking that as encouragement, Lister went on: "—and his brother was William Holden; a blond, good-looking type. In the film, Linus's brother always got all the attention from the girls, right, while Linus dedicated his entire life to his career. He never thought he had time to find the right girl, a girl who loved him for himself. And that's how it's always been with Rimmer."

"So, why the change?" the Cat asked.

"It's Lise, I'm tellin' you. I reckon what we just saw is what Rimmer would be like if he thought someone cared about him. It's made him…well…happy."

"What happens when he finds out it's all a lie?"

Lister frowned. 

"What d'you mean, a lie?"

"You know what I mean, Grease Stain," the Cat said. "What happens when Goal Post Head finds out you pasted all that lovey-dovey stuff into his brain?"

Lister got right up in Cat's face, until he could smell the trout he'd been eating over his chic cologne. 

"He's not going to find out, is he. Because neither of us is ever, ever going to tell him. Ever. Got that?"

Cat pushed him away. 

"Hey, back off, monkey. You'll crease my suit! It's no big thing to me whether he knows or not. But I still think you'd have been better off getting him a tie."

Next up: Day Three!


	3. Day Three

The Cat peacefully napped on Lister's upper bunk, while Lister sat at the metal table puzzling over his jigsaw. Rimmer, intangible hologram that he was, crouched on the floor in front of a small pile of journals, coaxing one of the Skutters to help him flip through the pages. After a long while, he looked up from his work with a frustrated sigh.

"I just can't understand it," he said.

"Can't understand what?" Lister responded absently, attempting to force two completely black pieces with no distinguishing marks to fit together with another three completely black pieces with no distinguishing marks.

Rimmer stood with a popping of his hologrammatic joints. 

"I've been looking through my old journals from that year Lise and I went out. And I haven't found a single reference to her."

Lister's eyes slid to the side and he struggled to swallow a wince. 

"Well, maybe those are the wrong journals."

"No, it was that year all right," Rimmer said. "But why would I— Unless…"

Lister's eyes slid back and he risked a glance at Rimmer. 

"Unless what?"

"That's right—I remember, I didn't keep a journal when I was with Lise. We corresponded through letters. But then, what's all this nonsense here about Carol McCauley?" He gestured to the journals, clearly baffled. "And why would all these entries be backdated?"

A hint of desperation colored Lister's voice. 

"Maybe it was a decoy, you know? A false diary you wrote so no one would go lookin' for the real one?"

Rimmer made a face. 

"A false diary? But, why would I—" He stopped and looked up, snapping his fingers in realization. "Of course! Schwartz!"

"What?"

"Schwartz!" Rimmer repeated. "Third technician. One of my more notorious roommates. He was a piece of work, I tell you, Lister. You know what he used to do? He used to go around smearing insti-bond extra-stick superglue on all the things he reckoned I might touch, then hide the solvent. I put up with it for a while—good natured ribbing from the team and all that…"

Lister was familiar enough with Rimmer to venture a better translation. 

"Big man, then, was he?"

"Built like a yeti," Rimmer admitted. "Anyway, this one evening, I caught him and his mates holding a public reading from my journal. Once I'd reclaimed it—"

"Endured a beating, you mean."

Rimmer glared. 

"—and put them all on official report, I decided it was high time I gave that lumbering git a taste of his own medicine."

"What'd you do, pour the superglue onto his pillow?" Lister teased. 

Rimmer was nonplussed.

"Come now, Listy. Give me some credit."

Lister thought for a moment, then: "Not the bog!"

Rimmer looked smug. 

"The bog indeed, matey. I squeezed a full tube of that insti-bond stuff all over the seat, the underside of the lid, the flush control, the toilet roll. I don't know if you ever met Schwartz, Lister, but he was a huge, hairy brute. Put one in mind of a bear that had been stuffed into a shirt and trousers. As you might imagine, it took them ages to get him unstuck. They had to detach the cistern in the end, you know, and cart him, the toilet, and a good part of the wall as well up to the medical unit, through all those wonderfully crowded corridors and lifts. He got a shift transfer the very next day and, for three blissful weeks, I had these quarters all to myself. It was only after we returned to space dock that I ended up with you."

"So, that's how it happened," Lister said, amused by the story but not inclined to show it. "I always said you were a weasel, Rimmer."

"A weasel who outwitted a bear, then got stuck with a gerbil and his smegging cat. But enough of this. I need to think. Where would I have hidden my correspondence with Lise?"

Lister watched Rimmer and the Skutter hunt for the non-existent letters for a few moments, the spark of an idea beginning to flicker and grow in his mind.

"You're doin' all this because you miss her, aren't you," he said, trying his best to sound disinterested. "Lookin' through your old journals an' that."

Rimmer's response was distracted. 

"What? Yes, of course I miss her. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am it was a mistake ever to leave her."

Lister eyed him, watching as he inched nervously up to the bunk before hesitantly pushing his head through to check behind it.

"I bet, if you had the chance, you'd want to see her again. Talk to her, even if she turned you away?"

Rimmer straightened with a deeply uncomfortable shudder, carefully touching his hair and shoulders to make sure he was still intact.

"What are you getting at, Lister?" he said irritably. "This isn't another of your feeble attempts to get me to power down so you can swan around the ship with Kristine Kochanski?"

Lister's jaw dropped. How did he—? 

"But you were just sayin' you know what it's like to miss someone!"

"But at least I had a real relationship with Lise," Rimmer said, sinking into the chair across from him. "I lived with her, Listy, cared for her. For that brief time we had together, she was like my second self. Kochanski's just some bird you fantasized about while you were dreaming up that puerile plan of yours to start that donut diner horse farm twaddle on Fiji. There's nothing there to miss."

Lister pushed back from the table in frustration, his voice rising to a petulant whine. 

"Oh, what do you know about it. You won't even give me the chance to speak to her."

Rimmer sat back and crossed his arms, a strange expression coming over his face as he watched Lister slam his fist against the side of the bunk.

"She really means a lot to you, doesn't she."

Lister's retort oozed sarcasm. 

"Just figured that out, did you, Sherlock?"

"And it would be just for one evening?"

Lister turned back to face him, barely daring to hope that this train of thought was heading where he thought it was heading.

"You know it would, Rimmer. I wouldn't break my word. Not when it comes to your life."

Rimmer seemed about to say something, then he shook his head. 

"But have you thought about this from her point of view, Listy?" he said, his voice tight with unfamiliar compassion. "To you, it's just an evening out with a personality disk, but to her… You don't know what it's like…bursting to sudden consciousness only to be told you're dead, that everyone's dead, and you're nothing more than a computer projection made entirely of light. You'd probably have to spend the whole evening getting her to calm down from the trauma of it all. And then, to tell her at the end you have to switch her off, plunge her back into that…that nothing—" 

He closed his eyes against the thought. 

"It's cruel, Lister. Too cruel, and I won't allow it. If you ever were to bring her back, unless she specifically asked to be turned off, it would have to be all or nothing."

Lister's forehead furrowed. 

"What are you sayin' to me, Rimmer?"

"I'm saying… I'm saying…" He faltered. "I don't know. If it really means that much to you, getting a chance to tell her how you feel… If you'd be willing to make that choice, risk that pain…" He shook his head, looking conflicted and uncertain of his own thoughts. "I suppose I'm saying I'll think about it."

"You really would?" Lister eyed him suspiciously. "You'd consider laying down your life to give me a chance with Krissie?"

Rimmer looked up. 

"What? Good God, no. But I can't help thinking… If it were Lise, and I had the chance to bring her back even for one day, just to explain..."

He lowered his eyes, then turned them toward the window and the stars beyond. 

"But, I can't explain, that's the problem. I'd finally found a woman who loved me, who actually cared, and I turned around and did to her what people have been doing to me my whole life: left her in the dust for the promise of something better. If I didn't know it was me saying those things, I'd swear those memories of our breakup belonged to someone else."

He chewed the inside of his cheek for a few reflective moments while Lister held his breath, waiting to see if he'd sussed it out, if he knew what Lister had done. The tension broke when Rimmer launched back to his feet.

"Oh, what's the point," he said, not noticing Lister's relieved sigh. "I'm going to the Drive Room to run a search through the ship's electronic mail files. See you…later on."

On Deck: Part Four. Stay Tuned! :)


	4. Day Four

Arnold Rimmer was angry. 

Actually, he'd been angry several minutes ago. Now, as he stormed through the empty, echoing halls, he found he'd moved on from angry to some darker plane. The white hot fury that had consumed him in the Drive Room was rapidly coalescing into a cold, hard brick he fully intended to use to crush Dave Lister's squid-haired skull until nothing remained but sticky fragments. 

He stalked into his sleeping quarters, punching the air as if he were Rocky Balboa preparing for a fight. His oblivious quarry sat there, still fully engrossed in completing his jigsaw, while the Cat caught yet another snooze on the top bunk.

"Right, smeg-brain, prepare to die," Rimmer announced.

Lister barely looked up. 

"Eh?"

"I found the letters."

"What letters?"

"Don't give me 'what letters'," Rimmer snapped. "The letters."

"What letters?" Lister insisted, starting to get annoyed.

"You went out with Lise Yates too!" Rimmer bit at the words like a dog snapping at a rabbit. "I found the letters she sent you."

It took another moment, but Lister's memory finally caught up with the conversation. His expression fell in on itself as he realized what this meant: no Krissie, and back to the prattish, old-style Rimmer. 

"Oh, smeg!"

"All the time she was going out with me she must have been seeing you as well, behind my back," Rimmer was saying when he managed to tune back in. "And what is more, to pour salt into the wound, you used to take her to the exact same places I used to take her and do the exact same things!"

Lister shook his head, defeated. 

"Rimmer, it's not what it looks like."

"That woman is unbelievable," he ranted. "We spent a night in a hotel in Southport and made love six times. According to her letter you were in the exact same hotel and you made love six times too!"

Lister closed his eyes. 

"Listen."

"Twelve times a night? What is wrong with the woman? She's sex mad!"

"Listen!"

"It's a good job you were there. If I'd been on my own I'd have been dead within a week. But it doesn't make sense!" he said, anger, confusion, and hurt battling across his narrow face. "I mean, she loved me."

Lister kept his voice low and calm. 

"Listen, listen. She wasn't going out with us both at the same time."

"Come on, I've checked the dates," Rimmer snarled.

"She wasn't going out with you at all."

"She..." Rimmer paused, checked himself, then tried again. "She didn't go out with me at all?

"No, you've never even met her."

Rimmer peered down at his bunkmate as if he'd just offered him a steaming bucket of ostrich vomit. 

"Is that the best you can do, Lister? That's below feeble."

Lister picked at his fingers. 

"I went down to the hologram simulation suite," he confessed quietly, "and I gave you eight months of my memory."

"What?"

"It was a present."

Rimmer stared at him, horror leaching into his expression as the words penetrated through his anger. 

"You gave me eight months of your memory, as a present?"

"Yeah."

Lister nodded, unable to quite look him in the eye.

Rimmer blinked, all the inconsistencies and confusions he'd tried to rationalize away suddenly standing out in sharp relief, revealed for what they were. Lies. False memories pasted over his own dull, gray recollections of those months. It wasn't even a good patch job; yet, like a soap-opera addict on an online dating forum, he'd willingly allowed himself to be taken in, seeing only what he'd wanted to see and stubbornly disregarding any clues that might have broken the illusion.

He was a dupe, a joke, a pathetic, despicable wretch. And Lister had known all the time. The two-faced little gimboid had probably been laughing about this behind his back for days.

"That's why I was an orphan, even though my parents were alive," he stated in a dejected monotone. "That's why I had my appendix out...twice."

"I thought it was what you needed."

Rimmer looked away, no longer able to face him. 

"You've destroyed me, Lister. The woman I loved most in the whole world didn't love me. She loved you."

"Rimmer, listen," Lister tried, but Rimmer had already turned his back and was pacing swiftly down the corridor as though it was taking him all his strength not to run. Lister got up and called after him from the doorway, "Rimmer, listen. Rimmer! Oh, smeg!"

He kicked at the floor and slumped back into his chair. Up on the top bunk, the Cat opened one eye just the barest slit.

"You should have bought him a tie."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: Any excerpts from the episode that appear above were quoted from the Scripts page of the PlanetSmeg website. The superglue story in "Day Three" was inspired by Series 3, Episode 1 of The Brittas Empire: "The Trial."
> 
> NEXT TIME on "Thanks for the Memories" : DEAD - A story inspired by the lost episode "The Bodysnatcher." Stay Tuned!
> 
> Reviews, comments, and critiques are always appreciated. Please let me know what you think! :)


	5. Dead: Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is generally inspired by the lost episode "Bodysnatcher," which would have been the second episode of Series 1 but ended up getting scrapped and cannibalized for parts. In 2007, the story was completed and produced as an animated storyboard performed by the awesome Chris Barrie. The story goes back to the early days, when Lister just emerged from stasis. Confronted with the death of the crew and the incomprehensibly vast expanse of space and time separating them from their home system, Lister and Rimmer struggle to come to terms with the bleak loneliness of their new existence - Lister as the last human alive, Rimmer as an intangible, computer-simulated ghost of a dead man. Instead of pulling together, they push each other away until, soon, they each begin to crack in their own uniquely dysfunctional ways. Rimmer, determined to grow himself a new, living body, starts snatching bits and pieces from an increasingly dejected Lister, but he soon realizes dead cells aren't good enough. If his scheme is going to work, he's going to need more...

#2: Dead  
Prologue

The emptiness of the ship throbbed around him, dense and heavy with memory. It writhed and coiled in the dim, metallic corridors; a vast, unliving thing, pressing its cold scales against his skin and threatening to squeeze. 

Dave Lister set his jaw and stared it down, letting its oppressive weight fill him, then slowly drain out through his psyche.

It wasn't gone, though. The emptiness. He could sense it still lurking, waiting to pounce.

Shivering slightly, Lister turned his back and made a bee-line for his bright, cluttered quarters.

His bunkmate, Arnold Rimmer, sat at the metal table in the center of the steel-gray room, deeply engrossed in a game of checkers with one of the ship's service robots: a Skutter called Bob. He acknowledged Lister with a glance as he came in, and Lister nodded to him in return, climbing up onto his bunk to watch as Rimmer leaned thoughtfully over the checkerboard, his high forehead furrowed in concentration around the prominent H that marked him out as a hologram.

Arnold Rimmer was dead. He had died over three million years before when a cadmium II radiation leak wiped out the crew of the Jupiter Mining Corp. vessel Red Dwarf. More than a thousand souls had perished that day. All except Lister, who'd been locked in a stasis booth, and his unquarantined pet cat (the reason the Captain had ordered him to be locked in a stasis booth), who'd been safely sealed in the hold with her kittens when the disaster occurred. 

Now, Rimmer existed as a holographic projection, a computer simulated ghost of the living crewman who'd once inhabited the room's bottom bunk. He couldn't touch, he couldn't eat. He couldn't perform any significant bodily functions apart from hearing, seeing, speaking, ambulating, and rolling his eyes. But, he did exist. He was present. He still thought and dreamed and yearned and felt. And, he was determined to win this game.

After a long moment, Rimmer smiled to himself and pointed to a red square. The Skutter obligingly moved Rimmer's game piece for him, then followed with a quick move of his own. Rimmer frowned in surprise and sat back to ponder his options. The conniving Skutter had laid a trap for him, but there had to be a way out.

Lister, who was rooting for Bob, snorted a little and leaned back against his pillow. 

It was a calm day, a quiet day, a day that needed no words. A year ago, words had been exchanged that continued to echo even now, in the silence between him and Rimmer. They didn't need to be said again. It was enough that they both remembered...

"YYYEEEEEEOOOOOWWWWW!"

A shrill yowl shattered the companionable silence, causing Lister to bump his head on the ceiling and leaving a startled Rimmer standing half in the table, half in Bob. He noted his situation with a squeak of horror and backed away, stumbling into his bunk as a tall humanoid glided smoothly into the room in a whirl of silver sequins and black roller skates.

"ATTENTION, ATTENTION!" the creature pronounced through a polished megaphone, "TESTING: ONE, TWO, THREE, ME, ME, ME! WILL ALL LADY CATS PLEASE FORM AN ORDERLY QUEUE OUT IN THE HALLWAY; YOUR LOVER BOY WILL BE WITH YOU IN A MOMENT!"

Lister rubbed at the throbbing lump forming just above the dreadlocks that hung from the back of his head, and met the creature's pointy-toothed grin with a glare.

"Cat!" he snapped, his voice instantly pinning his origins at 23rd Century Liverpool, Earth. "We both know there are no lady Cats on board. There's no one, man. So, what do you think you're doin'?"

"What does it look like, Grease Stain?" the Cat retorted, his sequined dinner jacket scattering tiny rainbows all across the walls and ceiling as he performed a graceful twirl.

"It looks like ABBA is holding a disco party, and you were invited to be the ball," Rimmer said snidely, unfolding himself from his bunk with all the dignity he could muster.

Rimmer wasn't from Earth. He'd been born on Io, one of Jupiter's moons, and his prim, somewhat nasal voice recalled his childhood spent at Io House, a boarding school for the children of rich, often neglectful parents.

"Why are you here, anyway, today of all days? I thought you were out 'investigating.'" He mimicked the Cat.

"I was, H-Face, but now I'm back! And I'm hungry, too. You monkeys got anything around here fit for a studly tiger of a Cat to sink his teeth into?"

"How 'bout some Crispies an' milk, man?" Lister offered, hopping off the bunk and crossing the room to his locker. Marilyn Monroe's poster winked at him coquettishly as he pulled out a cereal box, a small bottle of non-perishable irradiated milk, and the red plastic bowl he'd used three million years before to feed his pet cat, Frankenstein; distant ancestor of the Cat who was now sliding into Rimmer's former seat at the table and pulling a polished silver spoon from his front jacket pocket.

Over the millennia since the accident, Frankenstein's progeny had multiplied and evolved. Mutations that better adapted the Cat race to their human-made environment were favored and eventually the increasingly humanoid creatures learned English from the many videos they found in the ship's stores—mostly Hollywood movies and cartoons like The Flintstones. Higher intelligence led to deeper conflicts, however, and a clash of holy wars had left the Cat alone on the ship with only an aged, blind priest for company. And now, even the old priest was gone.

Lister filled the bowl with cereal and milk and set it down in front of the Cat, pushing Rimmer's checker game aside to give him more room. Rimmer countered that move with an affronted glare, but if he'd planned to say anything, he held it back. Today wasn't the day for their usual, abusive badinage.

"Mmmmm! Good Crispies, man!" the Cat enthused, happily lapping up the puffed rice as it crackled and popped in the milk. "So, what have you monkeys been up to, anyway? It's been so quiet today, if I hadn't caught your scent up the corridor, I wouldn't have known you were still here!"

"Where else would we be?" Rimmer snarked, peering down his nose at the irritatingly high-spirited creature. "We're alone on a spaceship three million years out from our home solar system in the middle of deep space. There's nowhere for us to go!"

"Right, rub it in, man," Lister said dejectedly, his shoulders slumping as he stared out the window. 

Rimmer's expression tightened in alarm.

"Oh, smeg! I didn't mean—!" he stammered, but after seeing the look on Rimmer's face Lister couldn't keep up the act. He cracked a smile and shook his head.

"It's all right, man. I'm OK. It's been a year, after all."

"A year, exactly," Rimmer said pointedly.

"Will you calm down. Honestly, you're like a mother hen when you get like this. I'm tellin' ya, I'm OK. One time's the charm, right? I learned what I learned. An' so did you."

Rimmer swallowed and raised a hand to his H, but he curled his long fingers into a fist before he could bring himself to touch it.

The Cat glanced from one man to the other, openly confused.

"Hey," he said loudly, slamming his empty bowl down on the table. "What am I missin' here? What happened a year ago? What are you two dog brains talkin' about?"

Lister winced and Rimmer's right leg began to shake uncomfortably. After exchanging a long, tense look - a battle of stares, really - Rimmer pinched his lips together and sighed through his nose. 

"All right, it's your ball, Listy," he said. "But really, you don't have to talk about it. I remember what they told me that day I spent with the Samaritans—"

"No," Lister retorted. "I said I'm OK and I mean it. If Cat wants to know what happened, I can tell him. Hell, it'll probably be good to get it out in the open air anyway."

Rimmer still didn't look entirely convinced, but he nodded and took a seat on the little sofa below the window. 

Lister pulled a metal chair over to the table, straddled it, and crossed his arms over the back, ready to begin his tale.

To Be Continued...


	6. Chapter One

"You know it's been a little more than a year since I got out of stasis, right?" Lister said to the Cat.

The Cat shrugged. Human years and months and minutes didn't mean much to him. His sense of time wasn't structured by calendars or clocks, but by his biological rhythms and highly attuned senses. 

"If you say so, man."

"Yeah," Lister said. "Well, when Holly first let me out, I was alone. I mean, completely alone. It's a difficult thing to get your head around, that. I mean, we all feel isolated and lonely at times, but you tend to take it for granted that, if you go out, there'll be people around, you know? It's like, you can lock yourself away in your room or your flat or on some deserted island somewhere, but no matter how far away you get, you know there's still people, out there, somewhere. Crowdin' the shops, ignorin' each other on trains an' shuttles, herding across busy streets meters away from the zebra crossing...

"Well, when I got out of that little booth, for the first time in me life, there was no one else there. Not another human being in the whole wide universe. An' I couldn't cope.

"For a while, I jus' denied it, you know? I went huntin' around all over the ship, convinced I'd find someone else. I don't know, maybe I imagined I'd find the crew hidin' just around the corner. Gathered together in the pub or somethin', waitin' to surprise me. It was daft, but I couldn't help it. I jus' couldn't believe they were all dead.

"Holly wasn't much help. Back then, he was still goin' by those computer-human interface protocols. He'd show up if I asked a question, or if there was somethin' to report, like a passing comet or dust cloud, but he wouldn't volunteer anything. So, I kept on askin', and he jus' kept confirming that everybody was dead. 

"That's when I started gettin' angry. I got a case of whisky out of stores and spent the next week or so on a bender to oblivion. I don't remember much of it, but I must have lost a good few days because when I woke up I was in the medi-unit…an' I wasn't alone anymore..."

*******

Holly was concerned. He wasn't sure what exactly he'd expected when he let Dave Lister out of stasis. Someone to interface with again, to prod him with questions and help him update his star charts, maybe, like in the old days. 

What he got was an ignorant, abusive drunk who weaved and stumbled down the corridors in an embarrassing state of undress. At least, it was embarrassing for Holly, who had to look at it. Lister was oblivious. He lurched through the ship as if it was roiling on the high seas during a storm rather than careening smoothly through deep space, wearing nothing but his sweaty, unwashed skin and sucking at his whisky bottle like a child with a pacifier. He slept where he fell, urinated on the floor, and left a loose, feculent trail the Skutters refused to touch.

Holly was a 10th Generation AI computer with an IQ of 6000. He was designed to oversee ship's functions, not cope with the frailties and foibles of the human psyche. But, even he could tell Lister was fading. If Holly didn't think of something fast, his human, the last human, would likely be dead within a fortnight.

So, he scanned all the ship's reference files on human psychology. When that didn't turn up anything particularly helpful, he turned to the video files. There, somewhere between "The Odd Couple" and "The Twilight Zone," he found the answer.

Humans didn't do well on their own. They needed company, companionship - and not just companionship. They needed challenge. Their spirit often flailed and stagnated unless they were stimulated by constant trials and provocations.

Armed with this epiphany, Holly did a probability study. The solution that presented itself was so amusingly simple, if he hadn't been just a pixilated head on a screen he would have kicked himself for not realizing it sooner.

The hologram simulation suite had lain dormant for three million years, ever since Flight Coordinator George McIntyre had demanded Holly deactivate his hologram just two hours after the radiation leak wiped out the crew. McIntyre had killed himself during the ship's last mission in a desperate scheme to outwit a creatively violent gang of debt collectors, and he'd been resurrected as hologram so the crew wouldn't be caught short-handed in a crisis. Every human, upon joining the Space Corps, was required to submit to a detailed brain scan, whereupon their memories and personality profiles would be digitized and saved to disk. Three million years ago, one of Holly's ongoing tasks had been to continually update these files for each crewmember for as long as he or she was assigned to Red Dwarf. Now, Holly uninstalled McIntyre's program and uploaded a new one.

Holly's first attempt to initalize the disk resulted only in a warning message reading Program Unstable. A scan showed no corrupted files, though, so he figured it was just that, after millenia of disuse, the ancient machinery needed a few moments to warm up. He set the dusty disk on a spin through the CD polisher, reinstalled it, and after several false starts the holographic image of a tall, slim man with a stiff posture, flared nostrils, and short, curly hair obligingly coalesced in a burst of near-blinding light. Along with the image came a blood-curdling howl, a bawl of sheer, piercing horror that seemed to rip through the barrier between life and death, existence and nothingness.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"Oi," Holly winced at the noise. "Do us a lemon."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH—what?"

The hologram blinked, staggered, and looked around at the bright whiteness of the hologram simulation suite. 

"What happened? Where am I? I…I thought…" 

He swallowed and started patting his chest, his arms, his legs, his wiry hair. 

"I…I'm alive? I survived that?"

"'Fraid not, Arnold," Holly said in his calm, London-tinted monotone. "You died. The whole crew died. Well, save one."

"Holly? Is that you? What happened to me? The last thing I remember is getting blown under a Drive Room console by a nuclear explosion."

"That's right," Holly confirmed.

"So, how did I get here?"

"You died. Three million years ago. The radiation killed you. You're here now because I just uploaded your data disk."

"What? Wait." The hologram squidged up his eyes. "Are you saying I died?"

"Another genius, this one. Yes, Arnold. You're dead. The whole crew is dead. Except one, who will be dead soon if you don't pull yourself together and head down to the medical unit, sharpish."

But, Rimmer's hologram wasn't listening. He was too preoccupied with the disconcerting electrical buzzing sensation he felt coursing through his limbs, head, and torso. It pulsed and throbbed in a rhythm not unlike a heartbeat, but it wasn't a heartbeat. In fact, pressing a hand to his chest, he found he couldn't detect a heartbeat at all.

Rimmer shuddered hard and shook his head in furious denial.

"No," he stated. "No, I don't believe you. If I died… That is, if I'm d-dead... How can I be here? There's no way I'll believe that this is heaven."

"No, it's the hologram simulation suite."

"The…" 

Rimmer looked around again. Sure enough, printed on the wall in red capitals two feet tall were the words HOLOGRAM SIMULATION SUITE. 

He paled visibly.

"I…" He choked on the words, his mouth painfully dry. "I'm a hologram?"

"Got it in one."

"I'm dead? I'm a hologram?"

Holly sighed. 

"And he was doing so well."

"But… But I can't be dead! I'm not an officer yet!"

"I don't see what that's got to do with it," Holly said. "Lots of people have died who weren't officers. Most of them, really."

"Not me," Rimmer said angrily. "I refuse to die a lowly private. I've still got that engineer's exam to pass, that ziggurat to climb, a legacy to build!"

"All right, then," Holly said. "I'll prove it to you. Touch that control console."

"Which control console?"

"That console there—the one under your nose."

Rimmer hesitated, nervously running his left thumb over his right palm. 

"What'll that prove?"

"Just do it," Holly said. "I dare you."

Rimmer glared at Holly's screen and set his jaw. 

"Right," he said. "Right, fine. I'll prove I'm not a hologram. Just watch me."

"I'm watching."

Rimmer hesitated another long moment, then quickly slammed his fingers down onto the keyboard, nearly losing his balance as his arms sank through the console straight up to his shoulders.

"YIIIIIKKEEE!" he squealed and jumped back about ten feet.

"Told you," Holly said calmly. "Now, maybe we can get a few things straight."

"Huh?" Rimmer said weakly, clutching at his chest as he gulped for air.

"You're dead, right? The whole crew is dead," Holly said. "Except for one."

"Yes, you said that," Rimmer said, his knees still trembling.

"And this one survivor will die too without your help."

"My help?" 

Rimmer wrinkled his brow, and was suddenly aware of a strange, stiff feeling in the center of his forehead. Reaching up with a long finger, he probed the area, tracing along the perimeter of a cool, metallic H that seemed to be embedded there, a permanent part of his face. 

"Oh, God, no…"

"I did a probability study," Holly said, "and all factors point to you being the best person for the job."

"Job? What job?" Rimmer asked distractedly, rubbing at the big silver H and trying to catch a glimpse of his reflection in one of the darkened monitor screens. "What are you talking about?"

"There's a reason I activated your hologram, Arnold," Holly said pointedly. "And it wasn't so you could admire your reflection. I have a responsibility, you see. The last living human in the universe is in my custody. And he's dying. I brought you back to help me keep him sane."

Rimmer lowered his hand and made a bitter face. 

"What can I do? I'm dead, I'm a hologram. How can I help keep someone sane?"

"Just by being there," Holly said. "It's your presence he needs, Arnold. Your personality. No one else on board could do as well."

Rimmer tilted his head, intrigued now, and a little flattered. 

"Really? My personality? Who is this person?"

"It's a big responsibility, though, Arnold," Holly continued. "A real challenge. If you don't think you're up to it, I can always turn you off and make due with someone else. Frank Todhunter, maybe, or Olaf Peterson..."

"You— No!" Rimmer exclaimed. "God no, please, Holly. You can't—I couldn't— You can't turn me off! Please, I don't…I don't want to be…" His voice faded to the barest, terrified whisper. "…nothing..."

"So, you'll do it, then?"

"Yes, yes. If whoever it is needs me so badly you had to bring me back from the dead, of course I'll do it."

"You promise?"

"Yes, I promise. But, who is it, Holly?"

"Well…" Holly hedged.

"Is it the Captain? Or Carol? Holly, did Carol McCauley survive? Or Yvonne. Is it Yvonne?" 

He blinked up at Holly's screen, his face a bright bulb of hope.

"Nah," Holly said. "It's Lister."

The bulb flickered and died. 

"Lister? David Lister?" He said the name with the same disgusted horror someone who just discovered his friend's dog had been sick in the back of his new BMW convertible might say, "Vomit? Sticky vomit?"

"If you remember, Dave was trapped in stasis when the radiation leak wiped out the crew," Holly said. "He survived, but now he needs you, Arnold. You promised you'd help him."

Rimmer took a moment to weigh his options. On the one hand, there was Death. An eternity of bleak non-existence with no chance ever to improve his lowly lot. On the other hand, there was Lister. A putrid, puerile annoyance of a man. Just him and Lister, alone on an empty ship the size of a largish city for who could guess how long.

Rimmer squared his shoulders, the answer clear.

"I'll do it," he said.

"Cheers, dude," Holly said. "You'll find him in the medical unit."

"Why? Is he ill?"

"In a manner of speaking," Holly said. "He's drunk. He's been drunk for the past eleven days."

Rimmer rolled his eyes in disgust. 

"Right," he said, and rubbed his hands together. "Well, the little gimboid's had his fun. As of this moment, I'm in charge. There'll be none of this irresponsible larking about under my watch, I assure you. I'll whip that feckless moron into shape, or my name's not Arnold Jonathan Rimmer!"

"It's not," Holly said. "According to ship's records, your middle name's Judas."

Rimmer stopped short halfway to the exit and turned a glare on Holly. 

"You mind your own business, and let me do my job," he snapped. "Just wait until I clap my eyes on Lister, the fetid little gimp. I'll teach him to go mooching about the ship like some refugee from 'The Lost Weekend'…"

As Rimmer's rant trailed away down the corridor, Holly allowed himself a brief smile. 

"Regular genius, me," he congratulated himself. "Who better than an anal-retentive underachiever with delusions of grandeur to irk Dave back to health? Well, if that's me done, I'll go back to my star charts, then," he said, and disappeared into the mainframe where he belonged, leaving the humans to sort themselves out.

To Be Continued...


	7. Chapter Two

"Elkridge, Scott. Elkridge? No?" 

Rimmer glanced from his holographic attendance list down to the Skutter waiting beside him, a clipboard and pen at the ready. 

"Put a red A for Absent next to Elkridge," he ordered.

"What's the point of this, Rimmer?" Lister said, the emptiness of the locker room manifesting as a tickle along his spine. "I'm here, you're here. If you want to keep to the old maintenance schedule, that's fair enough, but you don't need to read out the names of the entire crew."

Rimmer let his eyes rove across the cavernous space, then went on. 

"Franklin, Tony. If you're here, answer 'present.'"

"Rimmer, for smeg's sake! There's no one here to answer. They're all dead. The entire team!"

"Hammersmith, Igor." Rimmer waited. "No Hammersmith? Right then, make a note," he told the Skutter. "One more absence and Hammersmith is on official report."

Lister stared. 

"What—? Report a dead man for bein' absent? To who? What are you tryin' to prove?"

"Hiken, Nat?"

"There is no Hiken!" Lister exploded. "No Hammersmith, no Franklin, no Elkridge, no Dillon, Cartwright, or Anderson. There's no one, Rimmer. No One. Understand?"

Rimmer peered straight at Lister. 

"Klarkson, Sylvester."

"God, Rimmer, give it a rest! It's getting morbid now."

"Lister, David."

Rimmer tapped his foot, waiting for a response. When none was forthcoming, he repeated, "Lister, David."

Still silence.

"Lister, David!" he snapped. 

Lister crossed his arms, but didn't answer. 

Rimmer straightened.

"Right," he said. "Failing to report in for duty. That's another black mark on your record, laddie."

"My record," Lister scoffed. "If I cared anything about my record, I wouldn't have been trapped in stasis for three million years. You do what you like, Rimmer. I'm going to grab an early lunch."

"Oh no you don't," Rimmer said, heading him off before he could reach the door. "I may be dead, but I'm still your superior, Lister, and you still have to do what I say."

"Oh, do I now," Lister said, a dangerous glint lighting his dark eyes.

"Yes, you do," Rimmer retorted. "You're a third technician in the Space Corps, my lad. That means you follow orders. My orders. And I order you to keep your place and pay attention while I hand out our shift's daily maintenance assignments."

Lister set his jaw. 

"Move."

"I'm not the one that has to move, Lister. I'm the superior technician," Rimmer said. "You get back in line or—"

"Or what? What?" Lister barked in the hologram's face. 

Rimmer took a startled step back, through the doorway. 

Lister kept advancing, closing in on the slowly crumpling hologram with each word. 

"Face it, Rimmer you've got nothin'. Smeg - you're not even Rimmer! You're jus' some computer simulation Holly set up to annoy me into gettin' sober. So, your choice. Are you gonna get out of my face? Or do I walk through yours?"

Rimmer had backed halfway through the corridor wall by this point. Noticing his predicament, he shuddered bodily and scampered out of the wall with a horrified whimper.

Lister shook his head. 

"I'm outta here," he muttered.

"Lister no!" Rimmer hurried to block his way. "We have a job to do here, and you're not slinking away from your duties to this crew and this ship."

"Give it a rest, Rimmer," Lister said, striding past. "There's nothin' we can do that the Skutters won't have to fix later."

"But, I have a responsibility!" Rimmer hurried to keep in step. "Holly brought me back to keep you sane, and I fully intend—"

"You!" Lister stopped short. "You, keep me sane?"

"Well, who better?" Rimmer retorted, straightening to his full height. "I am your shift leader, and a superior technician. That makes me your role model."

"Role model?" Lister scoffed. "How could you be a role model? Unless someone's lookin' to find the poster boy for the galaxy's most trumped up, pompous, irritating smegger."

Rimmer sputtered. 

"You always do this, Lister. Every time I give an order, you always have to put me down to make yourself look tough in front of the others. A real rebel. But there's no one for you to play up to now, is there, matey boy. Just me. And I'll see to it that you learn to respect authority, Lister - particularly the authority of a superior technician!"

"You're not a superior anythin'," Lister retorted. "Hell, you're not even a technician. Not really. You're jus' a hologram, a computer sprite programmed to think it's a technician. You've got no more reality than some character out of an AR video game."

"That's not true! That's not— I am real, Lister! I swear I'm real!" the hologram cried. "How could you say I'm not real! I have memories, feelings—"

"All programmed," Lister shot back. "You're not Rimmer. Rimmer's dead. He's dead, the crew's dead. Everyone's dead. Everyone but me. An' I'm through talkin' with ghosts."

"No. No, you don't understand. Lister—" the hologram tried, but Lister plowed straight through him with a dismissive wave of his hand. 

Rimmer froze with his eyes and mouth open wide.

"Fine!" he shouted after Lister's departing dreadlocks, using all his strength to keep his voice from quaking. "I'll let your insubordination go this time. But don't think I'm backing down, Lister. Holly assigned me to keep you in line. That means you'd better be doubly ready tomorrow, miladdio. Bright eyed, bushy tailed, and prepared to put in a full day's work!"

"Smeg off!" Lister snapped, turning just far enough to flash the hologram a two-fingered salute as the lift doors slid closed behind him.

Rimmer stood trembling in the empty corridor, glaring furiously down at his fingers, his hands. He could see the floor tiles through his palms. Quickly, he balled his fists and swallowed hard.

How could his eyes burn if he wasn't real enough to cry?

To Be Continued...


	8. Chapter Three

Many hours passed before Rimmer managed to sweep together enough of his dignity and pride to return to his quarters. That spat with Lister had shaken him more deeply than he cared to admit. 

But, that fight was only the tip of the iceberg.

After the argument, Rimmer had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrored lift on his way to his preferred brooding spot on the upper deck, and he'd nearly jumped out of his skin. He'd been avoiding reflective surfaces up until then, preferring not to think about what had happened to him. Out of sight, out of mind, that was the ticket. As long as he didn't look down, he could be as solid and living as the next man...which happened to be Lister.

Seeing his reflection in the lift... That had been a jolt of harsh reality his nervous psyche was not ready to absorb. He really 'was' a ghost. His normally florid features were drained of color, his technician's jumpsuit was washed out and translucent. Most damning of all, that huge metallic H branded his forehead, a permanent and inescapable symbol of his non-living status.

Rimmer had long held a prejudice against the dead. His family had drilled it into him at a young age: the dead were not to be trusted. Outside the Space Corps, only the mega-rich had the means to fund a hologrammatic afterlife, and once the hologram-simulation companies had drained their fortunes away, it was left to the government to continue paying for their holographic existence. Leeches, his mother had called them. Sucking good tax money away from the living who were forced to pay to keep those useless Deadies online. They'd already had their shot at life. It was time they passed on and let the living live.

He'd been present at a Hologram Rights march when he was a boy, back on Io. He'd sat on his oldest brother's shoulders while his other brothers shouted and sneered. Young Rimmer had even thrown a rock at one of the holograms, a rock that had passed right through her shoulder. 

Dirty Deadies, he'd shouted. Filthy Ghosts!

And now, he was one of them. A dirty Deadie, sponging off the resources of the Space Corps so he could enjoy a mere half-life, as miserable and useless as the life he'd lost so irresponsibly some three million years ago...

If he had any principles at all, he'd go down to the holo-simulation suite and end it right now. He'd recite to Holly from the Anti-Hologram League's manifesto and demand to be switched off.

But he wouldn't. Because he couldn't. He'd told the truth when he said he didn't want to be nothing. The thought terrified him more than anything else. Despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, Arnold Rimmer had always believed he was meant for greater things, that he could really achieve something worthwhile if only given the right chances, the proper breaks. Even now, after all the disappointments, all the pain, all the infuriating humiliations he'd suffered in his thirty-one years of abject failure, he'd rather keep the shameful half-life the ship provided than surrender to his family's ideals. 

So, he swallowed his anger and his pride, fought to calm his swirling anxieties, and shuffled back to his quarters...and Lister. Rimmer despised the man, but at least he was company. And, in his fragile state, the last thing Rimmer wanted was to be alone with his thoughts.

A forceful blast of bass thumps and electric shrills met Rimmer before he even reached the door, perpetrated by Lister's favorite band, Rastabilly Skank. The powerful sound waves actually made Rimmer's translucent image ripple as he moved closer to the source of the noise.

Lister stood balanced on the edge of Rimmer's bunk, reaching up to pull the posters and photographs down from his own. An unzipped duffel bag sprawled open on the metallic table in the center of the room, piled high with worn, food-stained T-shirts and colorful shorts in a variety of garish prints. Two empty bottles of Glen Fujiyama Japanese Whiskey rattled on the floor beside a third that was still an inch or two full.

A thrill of indignation buzzed through the hologram and he straightened, his face setting itself into a familiar expression of righteous superiority.

"LISTER!" he shouted, most of his voice swallowed up in the air-warping din. "LISTER, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"

Deaf to the hologram's shouts, Lister rolled the pile of posters together into a thick cylinder, secured them with a rubber band, and slapped them down on the pile of possessions on the table, where they shook and vibrated in sympathy with the music.

"LISTER!" Rimmer shouted again, then scowled and snapped, "OFF!"

The din stopped, leaving a roaring silence in its wake. Rimmer breathed a sigh of relief as the tension provoked by the electronic howls and screeches drained from his neck, shoulders, and abdomen. 

Lister spun to face him with an angry, drunken glare.

"What are you doin' here?" he growled.

"Strangely enough, I assumed sharing the same living space for the past two years might have clued you in to the fact that these are my quarters," Rimmer retorted archly, striding past him and lying possessively on his bunk. "It's well past lights out, Lister. Stow your crap away and get some sleep."

"Come off it. Holograms don't sleep."

"This one does," Rimmer snapped, rolling onto his side. "And I plan to be up early tomorrow, so if you'll have the courtesy to turn out the lights..."

Lister stared at the hologram's pale, transparent back for a long moment, then shivered and forced the overstuffed bag closed. Slinging it over his shoulder he said, "I can't take this, man."

Rimmer groaned out a tired sigh. 

"Can't take what?"

"You!" Lister exclaimed. "Lyin' there, in a dead man's bunk, like this is normal. It's creepy, OK? I mean, look at yourself! Your image doesn't even touch the bed!"

Rimmer sat up and swung his legs over the side of his bunk. 

"This is my bunk. It's been my bunk since before you signed on to Red Dwarf."

Lister shook his head. 

"Look, man, I'm not gonna argue with you. Maybe Holly did bring you back to keep me sane. But he can't force me to share my room with a computer generated ghost. It's not right."

"Will you stop calling me that!" Rimmer snapped, his see-through face flushing an angry red. "I am not a ghost! The pamphlet on holographic resurrection clearly states that, hologram or not, I am still Arnold Rimmer. I still have the same ambitions, the same personality—"

"All the more reason to scarper outta Dodge!" Lister snarled.

Rimmer stood. 

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Come on, Rimmer, don't start that act," Lister said.

"What act?" Rimmer insisted.

"Rimmer—!" Lister started, then sighed, bringing a hand to his forehead. "Look, don't take this the wrong way, man. But this…" He gestured to their shared quarters. "It's not gonna work. It was one thing when the crew was alive an' this was jus' a five year thing, but they're gone now. There's plenty of space for us to spread out. An' as long as Holly keeps your program runnin', I would like to spread as much space between you an' me as humanly possible."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean," Lister snapped. "You drive me mental, man. Jus' looking at those weasely little eyes, your ferrety face…!" 

He took a moment to calm himself, then tried again. 

"You and I? We don't get on. We never have."

"So?" Rimmer said. "My brothers and I never got on, but—"

"Why am I not surprised," Lister said, and shook his head, too frustrated to spare the hologram's feelings.

"Listen, Rimmer. I know it's wrong to speak ill of the dead an' everythin', but I want you to hear me, OK? I don't like you. In fact, I actively dislike you. You're a mean, stiff-necked, petty-minded, bureaucratic microbe, too blinded by ambition to see that you don't matter. Not to this ship, not to anyone. You're so obsessed with rank an' position, you've got no human feeling, an' no pity for anyone but yourself.

"Face it, Rimmer," he said, "you were a stone-cold stiff long before you died. An' I wouldn't willingly share my quarters with you if we were the last two people in the universe - which we probably are."

"Oh?" Rimmer sputtered, his nostrils flaring with outrage. "Oh? And what about you, Lister? You're not exactly Mr. Pleasant, you know, Mr. Easy To Live With. What about all the smeg I've had to put up with these past two years?"

"Like what?" Lister challenged.

"You snore," Rimmer said. "All night, every night. It's like sleeping under an adenoidal pig with a sinus infection. And that's just for starters. There are consequences to living on an all-curry diet, Lister. Consequences even the strongest lavatory disinfectant can't always handle. More than once I've walked into a wall of your stench and had to flee to the public toilets on A-Deck before being physically sick. You don't bathe, the closest you come to brushing your teeth is picking out shreds of desiccated meat with your greasy fingers. Your slobbiness is legendary: if there were cockroaches in space, they would have nested in your bunk long ago. You chew your toenails, you stuff your ears with noise pollution, you drink, you smoke, you keep company with brain-dead boozers whose collective IQ would make a fuzzy peach seem sharp. And, let's not even start on the practical jokes."

"If I pull pranks, it's only because you're such an insufferable smeghead, all the time!" Lister protested. "You've got a personality like sandpaper; you jus' wear me down, an' wear me down until I have to fight back jus' to keep from murderin' somethin'!"

"Playing the kazoo with your buttocks?" Rimmer said pointedly. "That's a skill you perform for your own amusement, Lister. And what about that time you got us put on KP duty because you rigged the vending machine outside the medi-bay to squirt chili sauce at anyone who ordered a black coffee? You can't pin that one on me, even if, as your shift leader, I did have to take responsibility for your puerile behavior when Todhunter complained to the Captain.

"You're selfish, Lister, that's what it comes down to. You're an infant in a man's body: a childish, inconsiderate, directionless beer guzzler, and you have the personal hygiene of a banana slug with a head cold. It's no wonder that navigation officer you're so hung up on wouldn't give you the time of day. She could tell from one glance what I've had to endure for two long years: that sharing quarters with you isn't just unpleasant, Lister. It's disgusting."

Lister bristled. 

"Well, if I'm so disgustin', what are we arguin' for? You should be glad I'm movin' out."

"You're forgetting, Lister. These are assigned quarters," Rimmer protested. "You can't just hop from room to room willy-nilly."

"What's to stop me?" Lister retorted. "Hasn't it penetrated that regulation-bound brain of yours yet? The crew's dead. The Captain's dead. They've been dead for millennia. Aside from you and the Skutters, I'm the only animate thing on this ship!"

"But—"

"I'm goin', Rimmer," Lister stated. "An' if I see you again, it'll be three million years too soon."

Lister grabbed his Rastabilly Skank disk from the player and his guitar from the corner and marched out of the room, leaving Rimmer floundering to dredge up a suitable parting shot. Lister was already out of sight by the time Rimmer yelled after him, "Right! Go on, slob up some other section of this ship. I'm better off on my own, anyway!"

There was no response. Just the hollow whirrs and clicks of the ventilation system operating out of sight behind the smooth, silver walls.

He was alone.

Alone with his failure. 

Again.

One thing. One thing - that was all Holly has asked of him. Keep Lister sober and sane. Now, Lister was drunk as a skunk and moving as far away from him as humanly possible. The selfish git had walked out on him, denying him his chance to prove he could do something right for once, and all because the squid-haired little bigot didn't want to share his room with a dead man.

Dead. It was such an ugly, final sort of word. Yet, here he was. Dead. A mind without a body, haunting the silver halls...

For the first time, the isolation of the empty corridors touched Rimmer's soul. His holographic skin prickled with fear. Backing slowly into his quarters, he turned to face a stark and cheerless space. Without Lister's clutter to lend color and life to the room, there was little left to show Rimmer lived there at all. Just his framed swimming certificates on the wall, a few clipped newspaper headlines, and one of his old revision timetables tacked up beside his bed, three million years out of date.

"Just as well he left on his own, the festering little gimboid," he said, but his voice sounded strained. "I've always wanted my own quarters. Anyway, he'll be back. If Lister's anything, he's a people person. He needs company, thrives on it. Not like me. Me, I can take it or leave it. 'Cause I'm a loner. A tough, independent type. I don't need anything from anyone, least of all the irritating presence of that repulsive intestinal parasite of a man, David Lister."

He stalked from one end of the room to the other, his posture straight but his chest feeling heavy and tight. The silence of dead space stuffed his ears, his mind, making it hard to think...

"I don't need him," he said, his breathing quickening along with his pace. "I don't need anyone. I'm better off on my own. Alone. Oh God…"

He looked around frantically, hyperventilating madly and caught in the grip of a rapidly accelerating panic attack. 

"Oh God, this is it, isn't it? This is Hell! I'm dead, I've got nothing, no one… No, no, no, stop this, calm down. But—"

Rimmer stopped short and bit the knuckles of his fist, swaying slightly as his eyes flicked from one corner of the room to the other, on the alert for glowing eyes and demonic laughter.

"What if Lister was right? What if I don't exist? If none of this exists… Oh God, oh God, I can't breathe, I can't—"

Rimmer's eyes rolled up in his head and he keeled over, his limp holographic body falling straight through the table to hover less than a centimeter above the floor.

"Pathetic," a snide voice scorned. "And you wonder why every roommate we've ever been assigned has ditched us?"

Rimmer opened his eyes slowly, and blearily hoisted himself to his knees. 

Someone's polished black boots gleamed just under his nose. 

Rimmer's eyes traveled up past the man's perfectly pressed trousers, bright belt buckle, and straight tie to his face, and he scrambled at once to his feet.

"You…you look like me! What is this?" he demanded. "What's going on?"

"Mind as soft as cottage cheese." 

The man with his face peered scornfully down his nose at him, nostrils flared with disgust. 

"You're a useless wreck of a man, aren't you, Rimmer?"

"Don't be so hard on him," another voice spoke up. 

Rimmer spun, only to see another copy of himself sitting on the small settee by the door. 

"He's dead," this copy said. "He's been through a lot."

"You always make excuses for this necrotic pustule," the first copy said. "He doesn't deserve your pity."

Rimmer turned from one copy to the other, completely bewildered.

"Who are you?" he said. "How did you get here?"

"Isn't it obvious?" a third copy said, unfurling himself from Rimmer's bunk. "We're you. Each of us represents some aspect of your personality."

"Are you real?" Rimmer asked.

"Only to you," the third copy said. "You had a breakdown, Arnold. Your mind couldn't cope with all that's happened. Your death, the isolation… Lister ditching you was the last straw."

"Are you're saying I'm crazy?" Rimmer said.

The third copy grinned.

"As a bedbug," he said.

"No, he's not crazy," the second copy said sympathetically. "Just a little out of sorts, is all. All he needs is some time to come to terms with his situation."

"'A little out of sorts,'" the first copy scoffed. "Don't make me laugh. Your sanity's snapped like a frayed rubber band, my lad."

"And we're the result," a new voice added. 

Rimmer looked toward the sink, his eyes widening in horror as more and more copies of himself emerged from every crevice and corner of the room. Each wore a different expression; some miserable, some cruel, some sardonic and mocking.

"Well, this is interesting," Rimmer commented, and fled from the rapidly filling room like a gazelle from a prairie fire.

To Be Continued…


	9. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SCENES OF SELF-HARM. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

It didn't take long for Lister to fall back into his old habits. Having someone to talk to for a while - even if that someone was Rimmer - had actually amplified the pain of being alone again. He felt hollow inside, as if his soul had been scooped out like the stringy insides of a pumpkin, and the only way to keep his grief and anger from filling up the void was to plug it tight with plenty of cheap, Japanese whiskey.

Rimmer watched his former roommate stagger through the halls from afar, taking care to keep out of sight. 

It had taken him nearly three days to convince the skutters to show him where Lister had disappeared to, and they'd only relented when they realized Lister's drunkenness was getting out of hand…and they were the ones who'd have to clear up the mess.

What the little service droids didn't know was that, while Lister was being rapidly swallowed up by lonely despair, Rimmer's world was far, far too crowded. Figments of his fractured psyche trailed the hologram like a cloud of mosquitoes; persistent, inescapable, and tooth-grindingly irritating. For Rimmer, it was almost as bad as being back at boarding school, or at home with his parents and brothers.

"Good grief, can you believe it," Rimmer groaned as he watched Lister sway, stagger, and fall to the floor, lost in another alcohol-induced doze. "I ask you, is this fair? That this boozed-up sponge of a man gets to abuse the privilege of living, breathing, tactile experience while I—"

"You're dead," one of his figments retorted. "You gave up those privileges when you failed to seal the drive plate properly and blew us all to hell."

"Perhaps," another one said. "But it really isn't right that Lister should be the last living human. I mean, just look at the man. It's embarrassing."

"Human, ha," a third hallucination scoffed. "The last living orangutan, perhaps. Surely even this godless universe never intended for this fetid little gimp to represent the last of a proud human species. Is that what Napoleon fought for? Or Patton? Is that why Leonardo painted, or why Pamela Anderson ran in slow motion on the beach? So all our proud history of achievement and invention could come to this? A reeking, naked pile of human excrement lying passed out in a puddle of his own filth?"

"You're right, it isn't fair." Rimmer scowled down at Lister's snoring form. "Why should that feckless goit get to be alive while I…" 

He looked up, his eyes alight with more than simple madness. 

"That's it…"

"Care to share your epiphany with the rest of the class?" a hallucination snarked.

"The science labs on Z Deck—why didn't I think of it before?"

"Think of what, photon face?"

"No, I think I know what Arnie is getting at," one of the more sympathetic hallucinations said. "Isn't Z Deck where they used to run those cloning experiments? If the machinery there still works—"

"I see what you're getting at," another figment said.

Rimmer grinned a manic grin. 

"I could grow myself a new body," he said, rubbing his hands together. "A living body! I could create a whole new me! I'd just need a few DNA samples, and with the skutters to help me—"

"But wait," a particularly snarky hallucination said; a hallucination that looked like he had as a teenager. 

Rimmer turned around, surprised to see just how many of his hallucinations now filled the corridor, and how diverse they all were. And yet, they were all clearly him, in every mood and practically every stage of life. 

The teenager stepped forward.

"You need DNA to grow a new body, right?" he said. "And that rancid donkey's behind over there is the only fresh source of DNA going. If you use his genetic material to grow yourself a new body, won't that new body look like him?"

The corridor of Rimmers shrank back in horror.

"Um, not necessarily," a rather small, translucent figure piped up. Rimmer assumed he was a representation of his intellectual side. "Those machines on Z Deck were state of the art. With Lister's DNA as a starting block, we could rebuild his genetic code from the bottom up. The body we create wouldn't have to look anything like Lister. But, it wouldn't necessarily have to look like Trans-Am Railroad Arch Nostrils here either."

Rimmer knitted his eyebrows. 

"What did you call me?"

"Fantastic!" the teenage hallucination crowed. "Then this is it! This is our chance to finally give ourselves the body of a real winner! A macho-marine-type hero, a go-getter, a success! Why, with a body like that, even 'he' might stand a chance of getting off the bottom rung." 

He smirked up at Rimmer.

The hall of hallucinations cheered and performed a synchronized Rimmer salute. 

"Up, up the ziggurat, lickety split!"

"And now," Rimmer said, turning sly eyes toward the skutters. "To collect that sample…"

*******

"Smeg! Sample failed to take. Again!"

"By Jupiter's spot, that's the sixteenth sample that's failed today!" The tiny, intellectual Rimmer pulled at his hair in frustration. "It's not working. Why isn't this working? All the machines are running properly, the genetic code read as valid…"

"Maybe it's the type of sample we've been collecting," Rimmer suggested, straightening up from his position at the microscope. "So far, all the skutters have brought us are bits of dandruff, shed hairs, and half-chewed toenail clippings."

"All dead cells," the tiny Rimmer said. "We need to harvest a living sample. A toe, perhaps, or an ear."

"You always think so small," a rather cruel-looking hallucination said, hopping down from a cluttered table. "If we're going to do this, why not go all the way? I say take an arm, or a leg. Plenty of cells there. And plenty of back-ups for when you smeg it up again."

"Yeah! It's not like that worthless drunk will miss a limb or two," the teenage hallucination scoffed.

"As long as we don't take his drinking arm!" 

The cruel figment laughed, and the rest soon joined in.

Rimmer made a face. 

"An arm...? Isn't that a bit…well…drastic?" he tried, but the hallucinations quickly shouted him down. Rimmer cringed and caved under the pressure of their disapproving glares.

"Right," Rimmer said. "Right, fine. Then it's settled. We'll go with the skutters tonight, when Lister's asleep."

"Who's to say he's not asleep now?" the cruel hallucination said. "He's been passed out drunk for the past six days!"

"Very well, fine, we'll go now," Rimmer said, and strode out into the corridor, where the skutters were playing Cowboys and Indians. "Pinky! Perky!" he snapped. "Grab that syringe of anesthetic, a scalpel, and that bone saw and follow me."

The skutters stared blankly up at him, their claws bobbing in confusion.

"Your place is not to question my motives, but to follow my orders," the demented hologram said. "Do as I say, and hurry up! We have an appointment to keep…with David Lister…"

*******

It wasn't too difficult for Rimmer and the skutters to track Lister down. He had left a clear trail of broken bottles, spilled alcohol, and worse all the way up to the Officers' Quarters - a block of decks that still hadn't been fully decontaminated.

"What the smeg is that brain-dead grease monkey doing all the way up here?" Rimmer muttered to his ever-present hallucinations. "Perhaps the ungrateful gimboid really does have a death wish."

"Oh, look," the teenage hallucination said, standing outside a pair of sliding doors. "The trail leads straight to Kochanski's quarters. How pathetic is that?"

Rimmer rolled his eyes. 

"Figures," he said, and waved the skutters after him. "Come on, let's get this business over with."

Lister had apparently spent some time jimmying the door lock. The smooth metal was scratched, dinged, and gouged all around the keypad. When Rimmer and the skutters approached, the doors juddered open with a crackle of sparks and smoke.

"Git," Rimmer muttered, and headed for the bedroom, expecting to see Lister sprawled across Kochanski's bed with a whiskey bottle clutched to his chest. The bed was empty, though, and seemed untouched. He next checked out the small living room/kitchen, then Kochanski's roommate's bedroom. Finally, he coaxed Perky the Skutter to open the door to the girls' shared bathroom.

Red.

He blinked, and looked again.

Red.

Red overflowed from the sink, pooled on the white tile floor. For a long moment, Rimmer just stood there, confused, unable to figure out the meaning of all that red…

Until his eyes fell on the dark form slumped between the shower and the toilet, and the whole, gory picture came into focus.

"Oh…oh God, oh smeg!"

Rimmer's roomful of hallucinations popped out of existence as a flood of horror shocked Rimmer's scattered brain back into working order. In a flash, he was by his roommate's side, kneeling in a puddle of watery blood that had overflowed from the ice-filled sink.

"Smeg, he's cut his wrists. Pinky, Perky, I need you to go fetch a stretcher. NOW! We have to get him to the medi-bay, quickly, before he bleeds out all over the floor!"

The skutters squeaked and squealed and raced from the room at top speed. 

Rocking back on his heels, Rimmer buried his chin behind his folded arms and bit his lip until it hurt.

"You moron, Lister," he muttered. "What the hell were you thinking? And with my Space Scout knife! God, where the smeg are those useless skutters!"

Lister moaned slightly, but if he spoke, Rimmer couldn't make out the words. In the bright light of the tiled bathroom, Lister looked alarmingly pale.

"Damn it, Lister," Rimmer growled. "Don't you do this to me. Don't you dare! The skutters will be here any minute, and you have to hold on, do you hear me!"

The hologram tried to reach out to him, to touch him, but his transparent hand passed right through Lister's arm. He shuddered and clenched his fist, his eyes beginning to sting.

"Can't you understand, you stupid gimboid? I wouldn't wish this hell on anyone…least of all you."

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments are always welcome! Please review! :)


	10. Chapter Five

"You can undo all these straps now, Rimmer. I'm not goin' anywhere."

"You're right about that, miladdio," the hologram said. "You're staying right there on that medi-cot under guard until I'm convinced we've seen the last of your self-destructive shenanigans. Now, let's try this again. Perky?"

Perky the Skutter raised its clawed appendage and began awkwardly negotiating a hefty spoonful of hot soup toward the general direction of Lister's face.

"Up a little," Rimmer guided. "Left - no, no, too far. OK, now. Forward. A little more... A little more..."

"ARGGHH! Me head!"

Lister sputtered and squirmed as steaming soup dripped down his forehead past his chin to soak his pajamas.

"Now, be patient, Lister. He just needs practice," Rimmer said.

"He needs spectacles!" Lister retorted, straining against the thick straps that held him to the cot. "He's gonna blister me skin off with that stuff!"

"I'm sure you're exaggerating. Let's give it one more go. Perky—"

"No!" Lister snapped. "No, this is ridiculous! I want you all to stop treating me like I'm some invalid dementia patient. I can feed myself, all right?"

Rimmer narrowed his eyes at the thick, white bandages that swathed Lister's wrists.

"No," he said. "No, Lister, I don't trust you."

"What do you think I'm going to do?" Lister demanded. "It's not like I can do much harm with a bowl and a spoon, is it?"

Rimmer shook his head.

"You won't manipulate me, Lister. Not this time."

"Don't undo all the straps, then," Lister said, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice. "Just let me use me arm. Jus' one arm! I won't try to get loose, I promise."

"Oh no," Rimmer said. "You're not fooling me again. First we'll unstrap one arm, then the other, and the next thing you know the skutters will be picking what's left of your mortal shell out of the nearest keg. Arnie J's not as gullible as all that, laddie. The straps stay put, and so do you."

"All right, all right!" Lister exclaimed. "Look, man, I didn't want to say this but..."

"Yes?"

"I gotta go. I mean, like, seriously, OK? You can send a skutter in with me, even watch if that's what you're into. But I'm warnin' you, Rimmer, if you don't let me off this cot in the next thirty seconds, we're talkin' a major accident, here, and I won't be responsible for the consequences."

Rimmer snorted.

"Nice try, Listy, but I am, in fact, prepared for just such an emergency. Pinky? The bag."

The little robot waved its claw blankly.

"What do you mean, gone? Something like that doesn't just vanish."

The skutter squeaked and squirmed.

Rimmer frowned and strode to the big, silver medical cabinet.

Pinky and Perky scooted out of his way, sheltering near Lister's cot.

"But, it was right there," Rimmer said, ducking and craning his neck, trying to peer around the cabinet from all angles without actually letting any part of himself pass through it. "We set up the whole device before we even dragged him in here. Where could it possibly have gone? Lister—"

Rimmer turned back to the cot, and his jaw dropped.

The cot was empty.

Lister and the skutters were gone.

To Be Concluded...


	11. Chapter Six

Rimmer found Lister standing on the catwalk that looked out over the Starbug hangar bay. A mostly empty bottle of Japanese whiskey dangled from Lister's hand, but the last dregs within seemed more like an afterthought than an active pursuit.

"So, I've found you at last," Rimmer said, marching up to him. "It's just as I said, Lister. Leave you alone for five minutes, and already you've jumped into a bottle and screwed the cap on tight."

Lister didn't turn, or acknowledge the deceased technician in any way. He just stared at the hangar far below, expressionless.

"Right," Rimmer said, nonplussed by the man's total lack of affect. "I've had quite enough of your shenanigans, laddie. You're heading straight back to the medi-bay with me, or— Lister..." The hologram frowned. "Lister, are you listening to me?"

Slowly, deliberately, Lister drained the last swig of whiskey and dropped the bottle over the railing. He managed to count to Ten-Mississippi before the bottle smashed on the grating far below. After a few long, motionless moments, he then turned his eyes to the large hoisting pulleys just above their heads.

Rimmer shot his former bunkmate a wary look.

"OK, Lister, you've had your fun. Now it's back to bed with you. Quick march, let's go."

Lister grabbed the support pole to his left and pulled himself up onto the narrow railing - first to his knees, then to his wobbly, unsteady feet, until the toes of his boots jutted out over the edge of a metal chasm nearly five hundred meters deep. Holding onto the support pole, he grasped for the closest pulley chain, swaying as he swiped clumsily at a dangling hook that seemed just out of his reach.

Rimmer's usually florid face paled from translucent to fully transparent.

"Lister! What the smeg do you think you're doing, man! Get down from there at once! That is an order from your superior technician!"

Lister pawed at the pulley hook, and caught it on the return swing. He gave it a yank and several meters of heavy chain unfurled from the spool above. Leaning against the support pole, he wrapped the end of the chain around his neck and clipped it fast with the hook.

Rimmer sputtered, his brain unable to credit what his eyes were seeing.

"Lister! What are you—"

"You ordered me to get down, Rimmer," Lister said flatly. "I'm jus' followin' the orders of my superior."

"I didn't mean that way!" Rimmer yelped. "Come down this way! Onto the catwalk, here with me!"

"Why?" Lister said, his eyes fixed on the toy-sized Starbug far below. "Why should I? So you can get the skutters to strap me to a bed and pour hot soup over my head?"

"That was for your own good, Lister. So you wouldn't do something as ridiculous as this! Now, get down off that railing and onto this catwalk right this second, or else—"

"Or else," Lister scoffed. "That's good, comin' from a dead hologram who can't even hang his own exam schedule on the wall of his bunk. What are you gonna do? A walkin' light bulb. What can you do?"

Rimmer's voice was trembling now.

"Lister, I'm warning you-"

"Talk, yeah, that's one thing," Lister slurred. "Annoy me back from the brink. OK, go ahead, tell me my options. Or, better yet, let me tell you.

"If I stay here on this ship...this...this empty graveyard of a ship...what do I have to look forward to? Huh? There's no one here, man. All me friends are gone. Gone! Millions of years back."

"I'm here, Lister," Rimmer said. "Holly brought me back so—"

"You!" Lister cried. "You're dead! You're not even real - you're jus' a computer program, a projection of an image of the one man I despised more than any other on this whole smeggin' ship! Why the smeg should I stick around for you?"

Rimmer swayed in place, unexpected emotions making his head swim. His chest actually hurt, as if Lister's words had physically penetrated his skin.

Lister barked a bitter laugh.

"Confound your circuits there, did I, bunkie? Fresh out of pre-programed orders? Then jus' listen. An' you can tell Holly from me...I was better off in stasis. At least then I still had me plan. Me dream. My whole smeggin' life's been one smeggin' thing after another, no plan, no connections, no responsibility to anyone. Mates came an' went - me schoolmates, me bandmates... An' I jus' drifted from one go-nowhere job to another, until I ended up here. Until I saw her..."

His throat constricted for a moment and he had to cough before he could continue, his eyes beginning to redden.

"Five years. That's all it'd take. Five years to build up me savings, to find me dream farm on Fiji. To get the most perfect woman in the universe to fall in love with me. An' I was on my way, too. She was startin' to come around. She remembered me name. Last time we met, she even smiled at me. An' then some puffed up moron with a stupid haircut fails to seal the drive plate properly, and poof! It's all gone! Me life, me dreams... Krissie... Who knows - after three million years probably the whole human race is gone, and the whole planet Earth along with it!

"I can't face this. Livin' me life, day in day out, like some lonely rat in a massive cage. Nothin' to do to pass the decades to come but watch me hair turn gray. No fun, no friends, no women. If that's me future, I'm checkin' out. An' nothing some trumped up computerized deathmask can say will make me change me mind."

Rimmer shuddered, his face and hands cold. 

What could he say? How could an intangible ghost like him possibly convince a suicidal man not to make that final jump? He struggled to think how to put his own daily horrors into words - words that would persuade - but his brain blocked up at every turn. In his entire life, Rimmer had never felt more helpless, more impotent.

"Don't," he managed to squeeze past his constricted throat, his lumpen tongue. "Lister...don't - you don't know..."

For the first time, Lister looked at him. Straight at him. Then, he reached up with both hands to grab the chain that attached his neck to the pulley.

"Good-bye, Rimmer."

He gave the chain a tug to get the spool spinning, then leaned back over the shuttle bay, his toes slipping off the railing's edge.

"NO!" Rimmer shrieked, and dove after him on impulse, reaching out to grab Lister's legs. But, his translucent arms passed through the stained, wrinkled khaki of Lister's uniform trousers. To his horror, Rimmer found himself off balance, flailing his arms even as he tumbled through the safety rail, and then he was falling, falling through empty space with Lister by his side.

It was the longest ten seconds Rimmer had ever known, but he didn't see much of the drop. The moment he realized what had happened, he squeezed his eyes shut tight and started screaming like a howler monkey that had accidentally lunched on a patch of magic mushrooms.

That's why he didn't see Lister's expression shift, his eyes widen. He didn't see him wrap the chain's remaining slack around his arm, yank twice to engage the safety, and stop his fall mere meters from the broken whiskey bottle scattered across the floor below. Nor did he realize that, only a few moments after he fell off the catwalk, his holographic image ceased to tumble and merely floated gently down until his translucent boots, once again, hovered just over the floor.

"AAAHHHHH!" Rimmer screamed. "AAAHHHHH! AAAHHHHH! AAAHHHHH! AAAHHHHH! AAAHHHHH! AAAHHHHH! AAAHHHHH! AAAHHHHH! AAAHHHHH!"

"Rimmer!" Lister shouted over the hologram's shrieks, unclipping the hook and climbing down the rest of the chain. His wrenched arm ached like the dickens, but his neck wasn't so much as bruised. "Rimmer, man! Rimmer, you're OK! You're all right, Rimmer! You can stop screamin' now!"

Rimmer screamed a few more times before he managed to calm down enough to risk cracking open an eyelid and peering around the hangar.

"Oh..." he gasped weakly, swaying with relief and spent adrenaline. "Oh, God! I... You..."

He blinked.

"Lister! You're alive! Or, are we both dead now?"

Lister shook his head.

"No, man. I'm OK. Here, look."

He rapped his fist against Starbug's green leg.

"Real and solid."

Rimmer pressed a hand to his hammering 'heart' and sank to the floor.

"Oh, thank Io..."

Lister looked at him, a strange light in his eyes.

"You tried to stop me," he said.

"Huh?" Rimmer gasped, still struggling to catch his breath.

"You dove after me. Computer programs don't do that."

"What are you blathering about, Lister?"

A slow smile crept across Lister's face.

"You, man. You saved me life."

Rimmer blinked blearily up at him.

"What?"

"You are more than a computer-simulated ghost, aren't you. Those brain scans they made us sit through when we signed on to the Space Corps..."

Lister peered down in wonder at the hyperventilating hologram.

"You're not a light bulb. It's really you in there, isn't it, Rimmer. An' you actually risked your life to save mine. Even though you hate me. Even though you know how much I hate you. You still tried to stop me jumpin'."

Rimmer scowled and struggled to support himself on shaky legs.

"I told you, Lister," he said. "Keeping you sane is my responsibility. It's what I was brought back for. And I'm not going to fail. Do you understand me, Lister? Maybe I did stop you from hanging yourself, but I didn't do it for you. I dove after you because, for once in my useless, pathetic life, I refused to let myself fail."

Lister's smile stretched into a broad grin.

"I'd give you a hug, man, if I could touch you."

Rimmer cast him an arch look.

"Hm. Then, maybe this being a hologram thing has its perks after all."

Lister laughed.

"Buy you a drink, man?"

"Don't you think you've had enough for one decade?"

"God, you really are a hardwired smeghead, aren't you," Lister said. "I'm tryin' to thank you, man. Can't you pull that stick from your arse for jus' one afternoon?"

Rimmer regarded him. There was something different in Lister's tone, a hint of humor, even of warmth, that Rimmer wasn't familiar with. He wasn't quite sure how to respond to it, but it did make a promising change from the flat coldness he'd been receiving from Lister ever since his holographic 'resurrection'.

"You promise you won't try something," he gestured upwards with his thumb, "like that, again?"

"Who, me?" Lister said. "I've got that out of my system. 'Cause now, you see, I know I'm not alone anymore. An', really, that makes all the difference."

Rimmer looked at him, and Lister looked back, his expression open and honest. Rimmer's eyes widened, and he felt a strange, warm emotion fill his heart. Could it be...a sense of camaraderie? Of fellowship? For Lister?

Before the radiation leak, Rimmer would have been nauseated by the very notion. But now, knowing what it was to be alone, adrift in a frightening infinity of empty space...

"Yeah..."

He straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat.

"I believe you mentioned a drink, Lister," he said.

Lister grinned his gerbil grin.

"Yeah, man. I know this great little bar up on C-Deck. We can get Holly to mix you up anythin' you want. On me."

Rimmer nodded and very nearly smiled himself.

"Yeah. All right," he said. "I think I'd like that."

"Then, after you, mate," Lister said, and he trailed the hologram out of the shuttle hangar, letting the doors close on the memory of the darkness that had led him there.

*******

The Cat looked from one human monkey to the other, a look of incredulity on his face.

"So, wait. Are you telling me this monkey here tried to snuff it and you," he looked at Rimmer, "actually stopped him?"

Rimmer shrugged.

"Basically, yes."

"Let me get this straight," the Cat said. "You two hate each other. You," he looked at Lister, "think Goalpost Head here is a stuck-up smeghead, and you," he looked at Rimmer, "are always complaining that he's a disgusting waste of skin."

Lister and Rimmer nodded.

"Pretty much," Lister said.

"But, when you had a chance to finally be rid of each other, you didn't do it?"

"That's what we're saying," Rimmer said.

The Cat shook his head.

"No wonder you monkeys died out," he said, and skated from the room, raising his megaphone to his lips. "ATTENTION ALL LADY CATS! PLEASE DO NOT PANIC. YOUR LOVERBOY IS BACK IN ACTION!"

Lister and Rimmer listened to the Cat's nonsense until it faded into the distance, then shared a smirk.

"Cat," Lister said.

"Indeed," Rimmer agreed, turning back to his checkers.

"But, Rimmer," Lister said. "I've been meanin' to ask you."

Rimmer looked at him.

"I thought we agreed not to discuss—"

"No, no, it's not about that," Lister said. "It's about you - your hologram program. I know you don't like to talk about it, but..."

"What about it?"

"Well, back then, in those early days, you were completely transparent. An' now, it's like you're really here. I mean, you look solid. An' I was jus' wondering..."

"It was Holly," Rimmer said, moving around the checkerboard to view it from different angles. "Apparently, the man who last used the holographic simulator...what was his name...McIntyre?"

"George, yeah," Lister said.

Rimmer grunted.

"Turns out this McIntyre chap was some twisted character. He actually 'liked' being a ghost. He ordered Holly to put his program on minimum resolution so no one he passed in the corridor would mistake him for a living man. When Holly activated my program, he left the simulator on minimum res, leaving me to spend the first traumatic weeks of my death as a see-through specter. It was only after that incident in the hangar that I worked up the courage to ask him about it, and he upped the opacity for me. So, there's your answer."

"Good to know," Lister said, and plunked himself down in the chair across from Rimmer's.

"So," he said. "Fancy a real game?"

"You?" Rimmer said. "You want to play me?"

"I reckon I stand a better chance beatin' you than the skutters," Lister said with a smirk, already arranging the pieces on the board. "So, you up to the challenge?"

"I can take anything you can dish out, Lister," Rimmer said, taking his own seat. "Prepare to be annihilated."

"Back at you," Lister said, and made his first move.

And as the game played on, Holly looked up from his star charts and chuckled at his own cleverness.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like it? Hate it? Indifferent? I'd love to know what you think! :)


End file.
